Nothing’s going right for the president of Colombia, it seems. First he’s flopping miserably in his efforts to wipe out the FARC (who are much more likely to listen to his arch-rival Chavecito than they are to give a rat’s ass what he says). Now he’s flopping miserably on another front as well:
Colombian peasants devoted 27 percent more land to growing coca last year, the United Nations reported Wednesday, calling the increase “a surprise and a shock” given intense efforts to eradicate cocaine’s raw ingredient.
Estimated cocaine production, however, increased only slightly in Colombia and other Andean nations — to about 994 metric tons in 2007 from 984 metric tons the year before, according to the U.N. — as cultivation shifted to smaller, less-productive plots in more remote locations.
The net increase in coca farmland came despite “record” U.S.-backed eradication efforts that disrupted the growing cycle, said Gen. Oscar Naranjo, the chief of Colombia’s police.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. Alvaro, really! All that Yanqui dinero and all that help from the Empire, and now this?
Methinks you need an impeachment, not another term.